


It Takes A Village

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Parenthood, Pre-Canon, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 10:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15817224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: “Listen,” Vidalia says, suddenly angry, gripping Greg by the shirt. “I don’t care how freaked out you are, you don’t get to leave her alone with this! Do you hear me?!”“What?! I’m not—I would never!She’s leaving me!”After finding out that Rose is pregnant, Greg goes to the only person he can for help.





	It Takes A Village

**Author's Note:**

> This is something of a rough sequel to my piece, [Growing Inside](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15706722), but you definitely don't have to have read that to understand this. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

“ _Vidalia!_ ”

She rolls her eyes when she hears him crying her name and banging at her front door. Doesn’t he have _anything_ better to do? It’s true that he’s better than he was a few years ago, before he got that job at the car wash, when he would laze around her house for _days_ at a time, eating her food and watching her TV, while she had a _baby_ to deal with. But with Yellowtail at sea again and Sour Cream at Dewey’s house for a play-date, she had been hoping to spend this rare moment of alone time, well, _alone_. Preferably in front of a canvas. And yet…

She sighs, exasperated, as she paces to the door and opens it.

Her annoyance, however, immediately fades when she sees the expression on his face, the tears in his eyes. “Greg? Everything…okay?”

He shakes his head. “Rose is…she’s _pregnant!_ ”

Something in her stirs then, clicks. Is this—this seeming terror that oozes from Greg—how _Marty_ felt, after she called and told him? Why he never bothered to call her back, why he apparently changed his phone-number rather than ask after Sour Cream? (She’d never expected him to _stay_ —even as stupid as she’d been back then, she knew a hook-up when she was in the middle of one, and the fact that it had been in the back of a _van_ that particular time had been a pretty good indication. But she thought that after he found out that he had knocked her up, he might do the decent thing and come back. Or bring her out to wherever he was, or send some money, or at least _ask_ about the baby. But he hadn’t. He’d just disappeared from both of their lives like he had never been there at all.)

“Listen,” Vidalia says, suddenly angry, gripping Greg by the shirt. “I don’t care how freaked out you are, you don’t get to leave her alone with this! Do you hear me?!”

“What?! I’m not—I would never! _She’s leaving me!_ ”

Vidalia drops his shirt. “What?”

“I don’t know! It’s some space, Gem thing! She said that she and the baby can’t both exist at the same time.”

“You mean it’ll…kill her or something?”

“Well, she didn’t really phrase it like that but… _yeah_! Except…” He pauses. “Not really, because she says she’ll kinda _become_ the baby. But, also, _not_ …Ugh, I don’t know!” 

“Okay,” says Vidalia, pinching the bridge of her nose and finally stepping aside. “Why don’t you come in and we can talk about this.”

“Oh. R-right!” Greg glances around, as though he’d forgotten he’s outside, shouting on Vidalia’ doorstep. He follows her inside the house and then onto her living room couch, nods thankfully when she offers him a cup of tea, and takes it from her when she reappears from the kitchen with it. 

“So,” Vidalia says. “Your girlfriend is both having and turning into a baby.”

“Yeah!” He grips his head with the hand that isn’t holding the mug. “And I’m not…I can’t raise a kid! I mean, just _look_ at me! I get paid minimum wage! I live in a van!”

“Have you thought about, you know, adoption?”

“I can’t do that! This baby isn’t gonna be fully _human_. No one’s gonna know how to take care of an _alien_!”

“Well, then why aren’t your girlfriend’s friends taking it? The chicks that live in that weird cave on the beach?”

“Because it’s gonna be half-human, and they don’t know how to take care of humans! Or babies at all! Apparently, their kind aren’t even ever kids—they just… _come out_ grown-up! Besides,” He looks down at his feet. “It’s gonna be _my_ kid too…”

“Greg,” she says, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Do you _want_ this kid?”

“I…What?”

“I mean, if the baby was gonna be human and you could give it up for adoption, or if the freaky space chicks knew how to take care of it and you could dump it on them, would you still want to keep this baby?”

Greg sets his tea down on the table, and thinks for a moment. Finally, he responds, in a voice quieter than Vidalia is sure she’s ever heard from him: “Yeah. Yeah I would.” He pauses. “I don’t even _know_ them yet, but I already think I kinda… _love_ them. Is that weird?”

“No.” She smiles. “That’s exactly how I felt about Sour Cream. Don’t get me wrong, I was _pissed_ at Marty. And scared out of my freakin’ mind. But I could have tried to make Marty take him. Or at least given him to some couple that knew what they were doing…But I didn’t. Because as soon as I felt him inside me, I knew I wanted him to be mine. And if you’re feeling that already, you’re gonna be fine.” She pauses. “I mean, It’s gonna be _hard._ But you can do it.”

“How?! I don’t know what I’m doing! And besides, I can’t raise a newborn in a van! But I don’t have the money to rent anything else, not if I also gotta buy food and baby stuff! And I can’t get another job! No one else would hire me!”

“Tell ya what,” she says after a minute. “My parents have never met Sour Cream, and they’ve been _begging_ me to bring him and come stay with them. I’ll go crash with them for a while, and you could stay here. Rent-free. Not for more than like a year at most, but—”

“I…You…Vidalia, I couldn’t accept that!”

“Got much of a choice there, Universe?”

“No,” he sighs after a moment.

She smirks.

"But what about your husband?!"

"Yellowtail? He's away at sea for months at a time anyway. It won't kill him to come visit us somewhere else." She pauses, then changes the subject slightly. "I’ve got some baby books, too. Dunno how much good they’ll do for your weird space baby, but better than nothing, right? And if you wanna come hang around here before it comes, I could show you how to make formula, feed it—that sort of thing.”

Greg looks up at her, stunned into silence. When his voice finally returns to him, he asks: “How could I ever make it up to you?”

“If it’s a boy, raise him to be better than that asshole Marty. Though,” she adds nonchalantly. “If you’re raising him, he probably already will be.”

He wipes a tear out of his eye. “Vidalia,” he says. “You’re the best.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I love comments!


End file.
